Mad Hungry | The Dinner Special podcast

021: Cindy Ensley: How Cooking is Where Practical Meets the Creative and Pretty

April 3, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Hungry Girl por Vida

Cindy is many things, a home cook, a baker, an avid doodler, and new mom. And on Hungry Girl por Vida, she shares all the things that she loves with her readers. Her work has also been featured in magazines all over the world.

I’m so psyched to have Cindy Ensley of Hungry Girl por Vida on the show today.

On Starting Her Blog:

I was in college when I started reading food blogs, and I graduated and spent a year actually working the same job that I was at during college, and just being bored and uninspired. I thought, maybe I should brush up my cooking skills. I was engaged and going to get married in a couple of years from then, so I just decided to document it and see where it went.

It started out really small and casual with a point-and-shoot and has grown from there. And that started in 2008, so it’s been a while.

On Her Passion for Food:

I come from a family of really great home cooks. And actually my aunt and my mom have a catering business, so food’s central in our family gatherings. I just grew up around it and have always loved to eat, so cooking goes hand-in-hand with that.

I always wanted to help, but I was more of an observer. I was too slow and not skilled enough to be helping very much, so I just observed and went from there.

They don’t do as much home cooking now that, you know, I’m older and my cousins and my brother are all older. None of us are at home anymore, so what inspired me to start cooking for myself was because I had to.

But, I mean, seeing them in the kitchen, I used to help with some of the dinners that they would put on. I always thought it was super fun and my aunt would let me decorate the dessert plates, which I thought was the coolest thing ever. I think just being around it definitely inspired me.

For Christmas this year my parents were here and my brother and his kids and stuff, so I got to cook for them and that was really fun.

On Cooking Being Where Practical Meets the Creative and Pretty:

Personally, I like to eat things that are very visually appealing, so I mean, even if it’s as simple as scattering some fresh herbs across a dish at dinner with just me and my husband. I’ll do that because I feel like it’s more enticing and it feels a little more special. And, obviously, cooking is a very basic, practical skill to have. I like that you can get as creative as you want to be, and also make something that looks nice every day.

I don’t broadcast that many of my fails, just because usually I get pretty upset about it and trash them or let them die in the back of the refrigerator.

On Cooking As a Parent:

I used to like to spend a weekend day on an ambitious project or something, or even just cooking something that takes a lot of prep. And now, I try to get things done as quickly as possible just because my son is almost six months old and he needs a lot of attention. I like to spend a lot of time with him. So the easier the better, but I still try to make the effort.

I’m really into bowls, so like a burrito bowl or, I’m half Korean, so we do a lot of bibimbap.

I can have things kind of pre-prepped for anything like that, you know, rice or quinoa or whatever. And then whatever protein we want and then, you know, add fresh vegetables, or whatever we have on hand.

They say to sleep when your baby sleeps, but that’s nearly impossible. I think, personally, I can’t fall asleep if I have a million things running through my mind, so get what you can, done. I think that having a base grain ready to go in the refrigerator is a great thing. I’ve been cooking quinoa or rice or whatever in batches and keeping them in the refrigerator. And also, proteins like chicken breast or even a roasted chicken, and breaking that down and having that ready to go for the week, is really nice and a great time saver.

We’re trying right now to implement a schedule with our son, Casper, so we want bath time to happen at a certain time, but we also want to have dinner. And also now I’m starting to feed him solids, so it’s a juggling act. We’re just trying to keep on a schedule because it seems to work better for him, his moods and his naps.

Having things ready to go is key. And we don’t want to resort to take out all the time.

On How to Make Cooking More Fun:

Some days you just have to get dinner on the table, so it’s more about what recipes you have in your arsenal. But if you can throw something new in there every week, maybe, or even every couple of weeks, I think that makes it fun.

Or use a new ingredient.

A couple of years ago, my husband and I weren’t really big fans of fennel, so we started implementing it into our meals and now we love it. So I think that trying a new ingredient, trying a new recipe, but not going overboard and trying to do it every night of the week, ’cause that gets daunting.

Even shaved raw fennel in the summer with bibimbap or some sort of salad would be great too. I mean, there’s lots of different ways you can use ingredients and just trying them out a couple different ways, I think is also key.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

So lately, I’ve been watching The Taste, and MasterChef Junior.

What are some food blogs or websites that we have to know about?

I really love Food 52 and there are probably too many blogs to even name.

I have a really close friend, Megan from Take a Megabite, so I would mention her. I know her in person as well as through her blog.

She’s a pretty cool gal, and so I always think of her.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram or Twitter that make you happy?

I follow so many people on all of those websites. But I guess one of my other favorite blogs is Half Baked Harvest. Her name’s Tieghan, and I love her blog because her recipes are so creative, and they’re totally not things that I would do on a normal basis, but I find it inspiring.

What is something all home cooks should have in their pantry?

I think a couple of different vinegars and oils, along with the obvious salt and pepper, ’cause you can do a lot of things with that, those two ingredients, besides just make salad dressing.

If you have a soup that tastes kind of dull, those are great to add to punch up the flavor.

Name one ingredient you cannot live without?

I cannot live without eggs. I think they’re so versatile and they’re, I mean, in a pinch they’re a great source of protein, but they also are very transformative. You can bake with them, you can do so much, so definitely eggs.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

One of the cookbooks that I always turn to is Mad Hungry by Lucinda Scala Quinn. I love that cookbook. I also really love Pancakes by Adrianna Adarme, who writes A Cozy Kitchen blog.

I refer to that pancake book often on the weekends.

I make the chocolate chip ones a lot because my husband is a chocolate fiend. And then the regular buttermilk ones, and then also the apple pie ones. I think they’re called apple pie.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Probably Cherry Bomb by Spoon. It’s one of my favorite songs to like sing to, and my husband really likes it, so it’s kind of a fun one to have on when we’re cooking.

Keep Posted on Cindy:

Probably either Instagram or Facebook. Those are the two that I use the most, but I definitely use Instagram the most, for sure. (And, http://www.hungrygirlporvida.com/)

013: Sara Cornelius: How Cooking, Friends and Art Come Together

March 16, 2015 by Gabriel 2 Comments

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Cake Over Steak

Sara is a self proclaimed food blog and cookbook junkie, but above all, she is an artist.

Where many food blogs have super stylized photography that follow their recipes and posts, Sara illustrates many of the featured images on her blog Cake Over Steak, and they are crazy cool.

I am so pumped to have Sara Cornelius from Cake Over Steak joining me on the show today.

On Her Day Job:

I create custom hand etchings on gravestones, and you might think what the heck does that mean. Essentially, I illustrate pictures on granite with the Dremel tool. But we also have a laser machine that can laser etch photo quality images. It works like a laser printer but it is actually laser etching the granite.

I also create the files for that and operate the laser. We do actual pictures on some, or we use that to do texts sometimes, but the more fun part of my job is I create real custom scenes and things for people. Around here, it usually involves deer, cabins and tractors or things like that. Also, houses and beach scenes, so it’s really neat.

For most of the texts that we do, we sandblast that and a lot of that is done by machines and rubber stencils that is put over it, but we also have a guy in our sandblasting shop that hand carves roses. My boss says that he is the best guy in the East Coast doing that and he is really talented. So that is another art aspect at my office.

It’s really fun for me because now that I am in this industry, when I see old graveyards, I get really excited. I creepily go look at it, especially the really old stuff. I love seeing the designs from the ’20s and their kind of designs. You just get this whole new appreciation for it as a craft.

On Starting Her Blog:

At first I started reading food blogs and I thought this is really cool but I will never do this. There is no way I would ever do this and then I guess slowly over time I thought maybe I could do this. It seems like such a nice way to record your life. I like how people could weave a story about their life into a post with a banana bread recipe. You see how people put their own personality into them and you get to know these people through their blog.

I thought well maybe this would be something fun to do but I thought I can’t come up with my own recipes and I am not a photographer, and I would want to have good photography. Then I realized duh, I’m an illustrator. I could do the illustrations, but then I thought, well, I still wanted to have photos.

It took a while for me to actually start it. It took me like two years to come up with a name for my blog, so that was holding me back for a while. But when I started dating my husband, he is a photographer, I convinced him to take my photos for me.

It’s funny because we got engaged two months or so before I actually launched the blog, but I had already been working on it for a couple months behind the scenes. It was kind of funny because when we got I engaged I thought, “Okay then, I know I have a photographer for my blog for long term.” It’s not just that I am getting a husband, I’m getting a full time blog photographer until he gets totally sick of it and forces me to take my own. But I told him he has to teach me before it comes to that.

On Working With Her Husband:

He started his own blog back in June so sometimes it’s a push and pull where he wants to go work on his blog first. But he is a really good sport about it. I feel like people don’t realize how much of a saint he is unless you witness one of our photo-shoots together.

I am a total control freak and I think that because I am not in control of photography as much as I would like to be, it can be so frustrating to me. If the lighting is not good in the one afternoon that we have to do it, I’m like, “I don’t understand there is light on the table, why can’t the camera take this picture that I see in my head.” But he is really good about it.

With us both being artists, but totally different kinds of artists, we can feed off of each other and not be too competitive with each other. Because we are both very competitive people. But for example, I never say I am done with one of my illustrations until he sees it and doesn’t have anything to change. When he is working on one of his crazy composite photography images, he doesn’t call it done until I have seen it either. We are always asking each other for advice and he shows me Photoshop tricks for my illustrations which I do mostly digitally and things like that.

But also, when you are in a relationship with someone like that, I can tell exactly what I think and know that he is not going to freak out on me and stuff like that.

I think that we are really honest with each other.

On the Connection Between Food and Artistry:

I didn’t get into the field until college. I have always been into art as long as I can remember. It just has always been a part of me. Food, I started getting into near the end of college when I moved off campus and had my own apartment, and my own kitchen, and had to feed myself. I think needing to feed myself in my brain I was like, “If I am going to do this, I am going to do this really well.”

I have always loved baking and I was never super into cooking real food. But I think that’s because I just have such a sweet tooth that I have never been that into real food or at least I thought I wasn’t. But I don’t think I found the foods that I really loved until college when I was introduced to them. Like discovering things when you meet new people and you’re in a new place and everything.

That started to grow in college and then for my junior thesis project I did a cookbook. I mean it wasn’t actually a cookbook; it was like you pretend you are doing this big project then you do two to three pieces for it. So I did it as a cookbook and I did some food paintings. They are actually hanging in the kitchen of my parent’s house.

In my senior year for one of my graphic design classes I did actually design a cookbook. So I started moving it into my college projects. I was so burnt out from college that aside from my job, I took the other areas of my life off from art because my senior year was so intense. I started my full time job three weeks after I graduated so it was just no stopping. I gave my brain a break from art for a bit which I think was a really good choice, and instead, I would just bake cookies.

I did get to indulge in that other passion but slowly I started thinking more and more about doing the food blog again. What that would be and what I wanted it to be like, and eventually, it turned out to be what it is now.

On the Person Who Influenced Her Cooking:

It would be my really good friend Jackie from college. She was really into cooking and I remember thinking that’s so weird. Because even though my mom always had a home-cooked meal for us at home almost every night – family sits down for dinner and it’s homemade and everything like that, my mom didn’t love cooking and she still doesn’t. I think she might have if we hadn’t been such picky and annoying children. I really feel for her now looking back on that.

Being that my friend Jackie was really into it, I started cooking with her every now and then in college. Actually, when I started becoming friends with her, it was my freshman year and I went to school in Philly. That day, she had walked to the Italian market, which is kind of a long walk, just to buy a rolling pin because she wanted to bake a pie.

I met up with her when she got back to the house. She said, “Hey, I’m going up to the penthouse in the dorm to make a pie, do you want to help me?” So I said, “Sure!” and then my best friend and roommate came out to join us, and a couple of other friends, and we ended up going outside to eat this pie. We bought ice cream and some other things and it was as the cherry blossom trees were blooming right in front us.

That is the night we all became really good friends. So then every year after that we celebrated our pie night and we would have pie and ice cream when the trees bloomed. That was really cool. I would say she’s the first person I knew who really loved cooking that influenced me. But then once I started reading food blogs. It was really food bloggers who got to me more.

On How She Decides on What to Cook:

That’s a good question because I don’t make as much as I want to.

I have cookbooks that I have not even cooked from, that’s ridiculous. Sometimes a recipe grabs me so much that I literally put it on my to-do list. If I know I can’t make it that day, I’ll think why do I have this going on this night, but I have this day off and I could make this then, and I will put it on my to-do list for that day.

Every once in awhile it’s kind of like the luck of the draw where I have everything in my kitchen to make it or something like it and then it’s like, “Ooh this is what I will make for dinner tonight!”

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I don’t watch many but last year when I got my tonsils out I became obsessed with Mad Hungry with Lucinda Scala Quinn.

I don’t think the show is technically on anymore. I think you can find a couple of them on Hulu but I think the recipes are on YouTube though.

What are some food blogs or websites that we have to know about?

Definitely Food 52. That’s one of my favorites.

I follow so many it’s ridiculous. Smitten Kitchen obviously. I also love Cookie and Kate, Love and Lemons, Sprouted Kitchen, Minimalist Baker, Joy The Baker.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram or Twitter that make you happy?

Every morning I check in with a couple of Instagrams. My two favorites involve people with children, the one her name is Momma’s Gone City. Theo and Beau?

She is a mommy blogger but her family adopted a puppy like a year ago and this dog naps on their two-year-old son every day.

It’s so cute.

And then also food blogger Bev Cooks, she had twins like a year ago, a boy and a girl, and she posts really great pictures of them every day. She also adds hilarious captions so that is one of my favorites.

What is something all home cooks should have in their pantry?

I think everyone should have a microplane zester because if you have ever tried to zest a lemon or whatever without one, it makes me want to kill myself.

Those make it so easy and they are also the best for grating parmesan cheese.

Name one ingredient you cannot live without?

Chocolate. Milk chocolate.

I guess with baking I use more of semi-sweet but flavor-wise there’s like Icelandic chocolate bars, something they sell at Whole Foods, that I used to get in college, and I think my favorite was 33%.

It’s great, it comes in this plane white paper, it looks really nondescript but it’s two layers of chocolate. So it’s technically two bars and they are pretty big. They have all these squares but they have a couple of different percentages, but I liked the 33 and the 55.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I mentioned the Smitten Kitchen one, I love that one. I love Keys to the Kitchen by Aida Mollenkamp, that is one of my all time favorites. That one just has so many great recipes. My favorite pesto is from there. But that one is fun because each recipe teaches you a technique. So if you wanted to do just a basic recipe, you could leave out some of the crazy seasonings or whatever, but it also gives you a new interesting take on it. I think that is a great one for a beginner cook who is a little adventurous.

Another one I turn to a lot is one of the first cookbooks I ever got. It’s called Fast, Fresh and Green and it’s all about cooking vegetables. But it has it broken down by cooking technique and within each chapter it gives you a breakdown of if you are using this vegetable, cut it to this size, and do it for this time for this method. It has a bunch of great sauces and different ideas for things so I turn to that a lot.

I think that’s one of the things that I love about trying new recipes, because you almost always learn something and then I can use that to come up with my own version later.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Probably Dean Martin’s greatest hits. I really love the Rat Pack old style stuff. I think that makes me want to chill out in the kitchen and cook up some really good pasta.

Keep Posted on Sara:

There is always my blog cakeoversteak.com. I am also on Twitter and Instagram mostly. I put a lot of recipes on Pinterest. I’m not super interactive on that, mostly just to hoard recipes on it.

I would say Twitter, Instagram and also Facebook.